SOOTY TERNS. “THEY SETTLE DOWN UPON THE SAND 
CHAPTER V 
ON LONELY BIRD KEY 
As the chain grated the ear, / saio a cloud-like mass arise over the Bird KeyB 
from which toe were only a feio hundred yards distance. . . . On landing, I felt for 
a moment as if the birds toould raise me from the ground. — Audubon. 
O UTSIDE of Alaska, it would be hard to find a more 
desolate or isolated region in our national domain 
than the Dry Tortugas. Far out in the Gulf of 
Mexico, sixty-five miles from Key West toward the setting 
sun, rise half a dozen barren sand-bars from the exquisite 
turquoise-blue waters of the Gulf. One of these. Garden 
Key, has been appropriated for a government fort and coal¬ 
ing-station, and from the massive walls of Fort Jefferson the 
exiled marines gaze wistfully across the sparkling waters, 
white-capped by the brisk trade-wind, toward their Brooklyn 
Navy Yard Jerusalem, and count up the remaining months 
